Hasina has fallen, and so has India’s flawed South Asia policy?
Sadly, most Indians, fail to see the connection between Hasina’s rise as a despot and her fall because of and the role the India/Modi/Hasina Patron/Client relationship played in it
On August 5, 2024 an angry mob of hundreds and thousands protesting and venting their anger against Hasina and her Awami League government’s years of despotism, injustices and brutalities, marched towards her official residence, the Gonobhabon, demanding her resignation.
Sensing an imminent bloodbath, the military commanders asked Hasina to resign. After some dithering, she resigned and fled to India, ending a decade and a half long despotic rule, spectacularly unceremoniously!
What triggered Hasina’s fall?
During her decades-long rule, Bangladesh experienced significant economic growth and drastic reduction of poverty though at the same time, she and her government became “increasingly autocratic” that “stifled dissent, favoured the elite and widened inequalities.”
According to Al Jazeera, “Hasina’s stubborn refusal to compromise, overreliance on state violence, and deep patronage ties to a privileged clientele class had long disconnected her from the Bangladeshi public….”, which seems to have also blunted her capacity to gauge the “willpower of a nation’s disillusioned youth.”
Hasina, who looked rock solid till August 5 but fell like a house of cards, has driven home several compelling lessons in governance and development. More importantly, her fall may have also conveyed yet another important message that predatory geopolitics has short shelf life and its negative impact on client nations such as Bangladesh devastating and enduring.
India’s long hand and rise of an autocrat
India’s not-so-invisible long hands entered Bangladesh during the 2008 general elections through late Pronob Mukharjee, the then Foreign Minister of India.
Mukherjee played not-so-subtle a role in ensuring that Hasina and her party, Awami League’s overwhelming victory in the military-backed Caretaker government conducted elections and her ascend to power, an election that the observers dubbed as “free but not fair.”
Awami League did not have to look back since. After assuming power in 2009, Awami League used its two/third majority in the Parliament to scrap the non-political neutral election-time caretaker government (CTG) system that till then had delivered three free and fair elections except that the 2008 election was free but not fair.
It is thus does not come as a big surprise that with the scrapping of the CTG system in 2009, Awami League never “lost” an “election” and remained in power and ruled with patronage distribution and brute force, till early August this year when fed up with her autocratic and corrupt government, a people movement kicked her out.
Modi Era
India’s backing of Hasina and its interference in the internal affairs of Bangladesh gained momentum and deepened further during the Modi era.
The Modi/Hasina Patron/Client relationship was underpinned by two intertwining strategies – back Hasina unconditionally and in return, extract from Hasina maximum concessions – economic, political, and security with the result that Hasina with India’s security backing evolved into a dangerous despot.
And in return, Hasina conceded to and India extracted enormous favours from Hasina to such an extent, which included among other things, free use of Bangladeshi ports, railways and roads that by now, Bangladesh looks more like a vassal state of India.
The Modi/Hasina Patron/Client relationship that sustained an autocrat and in return extracted undue concessions and privileges from Bangladesh irked Bangladeshis. But fear of arbitrary arrest, disappearance and even extrajudicial murder stopped people from protesting openly – discontents seethed below.
As years went by, India’s backing of Hasina especially security cover intensified that made her “increasingly authoritarian, arresting and targeting opposition members, and cracking down on dissent and free speech.”
End came in August this year when student protest-turned-mass movement toppled her and her decades long autocratic rule.
Sadly, most Indians, fail to see the connection between Hasina’s rise as a despot and her fall because of and the role the India/Modi/Hasina Patron/Client relationship played in it.
On the contrary, some Indians believe that external conspiracy caused Hasina’s fall and argue that “Her [Hasina’s] decision to award the Teesta project to India angered China, …[and] Biden went after her” whereas others attribute Hasina’s fall to “intelligence failure.”
India’s spy agency, RAW blames “Pakistani spy agency, ISI and its Chinese patron in the Bangladesh unrest that forced Sheikh Hasina to abruptly step down as PM and flee to New Delhi.”
Nothing could be further from truth. While it is true that in recent times, Hasina did annoy both China (apparently for not giving contract of construction of a seaport) and Biden (according to Hasina, for not giving the Americans a military base in Bangladesh), there is no evidence to suggest that either had anything to do with the mass upsurge that brought the autocrat down.
Such myopic views are unhelpful to appreciate the issues objectively and mend the factors that destroy or otherwise the relationship between two countries especially between two neighbours.
Recently, the Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, the current head of the Interim government in Bangladesh, has echoed similar concerns in terms of India’s role in Bangladesh where he said at an Indian television interview that, one of the reasons why people were angry with Hasina and by extension, with her patron India, was because “India focused on Hasina, not on building friendship with the people of Bangladesh!”
In other words, ignoring the role the Modi/Hasina patron/client mutually self-seeking relationships played in promoting autocracy in and extracting disproportionate concessions from Bangladesh that fomented mass anger that contributed to the fall of Hasina is not just unfortunate but a sad case of cognitive dissonance.
India and South Asia
India has pursued similar intrusive and predatory foreign policy in Nepal, Maldives and in Sri Lanka. Recently, the civil society members of these countries have complained that over the years, New Delhi has promoted policies in its neighbourhood that have contributed to “unending political instability in our countries” and bolstered “autocratic regimes” where Bangladesh is its latest victim.
India’s opportunistic relationship with Hasina destroyed democracy, compromised the country’s sovereignty and schemed it of its resources.
Departure from Panchsheel
So, what influences India’s intrusive South Asia policy?
For quite some time, and especially since Modi’s ascent to power, India’s relations in South Asia have predicated on security considerations. Modi, an ultra-Hindu nationalist supremacist leader who prefers to see himself and India as the rising hegemon in the region, relies more on control than cooperation in foreign relations.
Accordingly, he has given his spy agency, RAW, precedence over the foreign relations expert in guiding and determining India’s South Asia policy.
The spy mindset in foreign policy has deviated from India’s much-revered Panchsheel principle that was propounded by its founding fathers which emphasized peaceful coexistence as core tenet of India’s engagement with its neighbours.
Thanks to the recent rise in Brahminist Supremacist Hindutva idea in India that espouses a big brother role in the region, Panchsheel has since been replaced by sly, suspicion, intimidation and machinations.
Reinvent Panchseel/SAARC Vision
It is true that when Modi assumed power a decade ago, he ostensively declared “neighbour first” as his key policy perspective for the region. But his spy-run foreign policy has made a complete farce of the idea with devastating effects, for the region as well as for India itself.
As is evident, the policy has bolstered autocrats and fostered pilferers in the region and in the process, has destabilised and harmed the region at multiple levels – political, economic, and institutional.
At the same time, the policy has hurt India as well – it has dented India’s stature, and depleted India’s trustworthiness among the South Asian people, and more worryingly, the spy-policy induced political and economic destabilisations in the region pose spillover effects on India in the form of business downturn, refugee outflow etc.
Thus, time is ripe for India to give diplomacy a chance. India must shun the practice of coercion and chicanery in its neighbourhood engagements.
Instead, it must revert to the Panchsheel principle and make peaceful coexistence and cooperation its core policy tenets in the region and help in promoting a democratically nourished, politically stable and economically vibrant South Asia. This also happens to be the vision of, now moribund SAARC, which envisioned a future where the people of South Asia could “live in dignity and realize their full potentials.”
[The writer, M. Adil Khan, is an Academic and former senior Policy Manager at the United Nations. Views are personal and author's own.]
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